Gramophone

“ There is no instrument that is so calculated to remove the conceit from a young artist as the gramophone. To watch his face as he first listens to his own voice is usually to enjoy a miniature pantomime.
Nevertheless, the gramophone is a spur to drive the artist forward to perfection, and, of course, a great aid to the music professor.{115}
Chapter XXV
STUDYING A RÔLE DIFFERENT artists have different methods of studying their parts, but all I think will be agreed on one point, namely, that they cannot possibly be learned too thoroughly. ”

“ The gramophone interests them enormously, and they look inside it to see [165] who is producing the sound, and will sit round in a circle listening to it for hours. Picture papers interest them, but usually they prefer holding the pictures upside down. The better educated men write a good deal on the free notepaper provided by the Y.M.C.A. Quartettes are sung by Karen and Chinese Christians. ”

“ Moreover, as a resonant instrument would amplify the sound and an inferior one would hamper it, so a greater artist would interpret a message to more effect than one less capable. The gramophone will give us the actual notes of the singer, but it depends upon ourselves as to whether we catch the real thing or not. ”

“ The groove being zigzag, the needle vibrates right and left, and rotating the carrier a minute fraction of an inch on the pivot, shakes the glass diaphragm and sends waves of air into the horn.
The gramophone is a reproducing instrument only. The records are made on a special machine, fitted with a device for causing the recorder point to describe a spiral course from the circumference to the centre of the record disc. Some gramophone records have as many as 250 turns to the inch. ”

“ With the gramophone, the cinema, and the automatic pistol, the goddess of Applied Science has presented the world with another gift, more precious even than these—the means of dissociating love from propagation. ”

“ These modern gramophones are a remarkable invention." ”

“ This is true also of many other words without the adoption of signs or characters to represent [33] sound, or the names of things, any adequate expression of facts or ideas is impossible. It thus came about that when pictures of objects or symbols of ideas obtained a fixed and permanent sign for the sound in any language phonetism began.
Among the confusions which appear at this stage are the homophones; relics of that primitive stage in speech, the monosyllabic, when few sounds were used to express many things. As an example in modern English, we have such words as pair, pare and pear ”

“ Dr. Adam says: 1. "A letter is the mark of a sound, or of an articulation of sound." 2. "A vowel is properly called a simple sound; and the sounds formed by the concourse of vowels and consonants, articulate sounds."--Latin and English Gram., pp. 1 and 2.
[87] Of this sort of blunder, the following false definition is an instance: "A Vowel is a letter, the name of which makes a full open sound."--Lennie's Gram., p. 5; Brace's, 7; Hazen's, 10. All this is just as true of a consonant as of a vowel. The comma too, used in this sentence, defeats even the sense which the writers intended. ”

“ The average above given does not place the amount of evil in the true light. There is not one single sound in our language which is on all occasions represented by one uniform letter or combination of letters. Of the 14 vowel sounds, 4 only, namely, a, ɑ, o, ꞷ, are represented in a less number of modes than 10 each; of the remaining 10 vowels, only 3, namely, æ, ɵ, ų, have less than 15 different representatives, and the remaining 7, which are the very frequently occurring vowels ɩ, i, ɛ, e, u, ɷ, ɯ, have from 15 to 23 equivalents each!!! ”

“ Without a vowel there is no syllable and sometimes the vowel itself is a syllable. Therefore all the other letters are called consonants, because they don’t constitute sounds by themselves unless a vowel is joined to them. They have some imperfect, maimed (mancum) sound, e.g. b, c, d, g, which without e cannot be sounded. Out of syllables we get words, and from words connected speech, which all beasts lack. And you would not be different from the beasts, if you could not converse properly. Be watchful and perform your work diligently. Go out with your fellow-pupils and learn what I have set. ”

“ Recollect that the foreigner is in the same predicament with respect to all the words in the language; and for this reason—the letters in our alphabet have no fixed sounds attached to them, nor is the same sound invariably represented by the same combination of letters. Now what we plead for is, some system of printing and writing, in which the same sound has always the same symbol, and the same symbol has always the same sound; and this we call, when printed, Phonotypy, from "fɷnɩ," voice, and "tɩpos," type ”

“ We register the sounds of a language by mastering and registering the movements of the organs of speech that produce them. Alphabetical symbols are at best but very imperfect pictures of sound-groups: they are used inconsistently in most cases: and in any case even the most perfect phonetic alphabet cannot give a true and exact picture of the countless sounds in speech—sounds which require to be constantly denoted anew in every language. We can only succeed at all in registering such sounds, when we are able to closely observe the sounds uttered by living individuals. ”

“ No doubt the practical man does not want the alphabet required by the phonologist, who must denote every shade of sound and have separate symbols for the sounds heard not in English only, but in other languages as well, but the alphabet of the practical man should be based on that of the phonologist. The reformed alphabet should be one which would enable the child or the foreigner to recognize at once the sound of the word he is reading, and the philologist to determine the pronunciation of the writer. ”

“ Most amazing caricature of a written language! ⸮And what is the result? No one spells correctly; many spell wretchedly; but no one is at all times certain of the proper mode of spelling any given word. For there is not even method in this madness. Words of precisely the same sound are spelt in the most different manners—words of different sounds are spelt in the same manner. Of these two cases, the following examples occur to us immediately. We give the phonetic representative of the sound, followed by =, and the heterotypic spellings ”

“ But how the ear transmits to the brain the impression of sound is still a mystery. Again, although the mechanism of the vowel is clear enough, there is still no generally received acoustic theory of its formation. In fact, from the physical science point of view there is as yet no science of phonetics.
The real function of phonetics is philological and literary. The only sound basis of a theoretical knowledge of phonetics is the practical mastery of a limited number of sounds—that is to say, of the sounds which are already familiar to the learner in his own language. ”

“ My host looked on with some interest whilst I did this, and bent his head as if in approval. Here then was the alphabet of the Martial tongue—an alphabet not arbitrary, but actually produced by the vocal sounds it represented! The elaborate machinery modifies the rough signs which are traced by the mere aerial vibrations; but each character is a true physical type, a visual image, of the spoken sound; the voice, temper, accent, sex, of a speaker affect the phonograph, and are recognisable in the record. ”

“ By phonetics is meant the science of speech sounds, their production by means of lips, tongue, palate, and vocal chords, their acoustic qualities, their combination into syllables and other sound groups, and finally quantity, stress and intonation. Phonetics thus may be called that part of linguistic science which deals with the outward aspect of language as opposed to the inner or psychological side of language, or it may be lookt upon as that part of physics and of physiology which deals specially with sounds as used by human beings to communicate thoughts and feelings to one another. ”

“ When a word cannot be pronounced phonetically, the teacher should assist by giving the sound needed, but the pupil will soon discover that by using his wits in phonics as in other things, he can get the new word for himself by the sense of what he is reading, e.g., in the sentence, "The farmer came into the field" he meets the new word "field." Naturally a second year pupil, who has learned the reasons for sounding will apply the long sound of "i;"—as he reads it does not make sense, so he tries short "i." ”

“ Not only should each sound change be always as far as possible seen in connexion with other sound changes going on in the same period in the same language (as in the great vowel-raising in English) , but the effects on the speech material as a whole should in each case be investigated, so as to show what homophones (if any) were produced, and what danger they entailed to the understanding of natural sentences. Sounds should never be isolated from the words in which they occur, nor words from sentences. No hard-and-fast boundary can be drawn between phonetic and non-phonetic changes. ”

“ The Old English long vowels have shifted their phonetic values with such uniform regularity that it is possible in almost every case to infer the Modern English sound; but our spelling is so chaotic that while the student may infer the modern sound, he cannot always infer the modern symbol representing the sound.
(2) Analogy. 24.
But more important than vowel shifting is the great law of Analogy, for Analogy shapes not only words but constructions. It belongs, therefore, to 24 Etymology and to Syntax, since it influences both form and function. ”

“ Of these reformers some have endeavoured to accommodate orthography better to the pronunciation, without considering that this is to measure by a shadow, to take that for a model or standard which is changing while they apply it. Others, less absurdly indeed, but with equal unlikelihood of success, have endeavoured to proportion the number of letters to that of sounds, that every sound may have its own character, and every character a single sound. Such would be the orthography of a new language to be formed by a synod of grammarians upon principles of science. ”

“ Thus, the pronoun “I” is expressed by the picture of an eye; the verb “can” by the picture of a can; “sail” by the picture of a boat or ship’s sail; “round” by a circle, and the word “globe” by a student’s globe.
In this first stage of phonetism we find that pictures of objects do not represent these special objects as in the purely ideographic stage, but the sound. Again, that writing had reached the point where signs and symbols stand for entire words.
For a monosyllabic language this might suffice. The necessities of a polysyllabic language, however, suggested a further advance. ”

“ The terms long and short, which are often used to denote certain vowel sounds; being also used, with a different import, to distinguish the quantity of syllables, are frequently misunderstood; for which reason, we have substituted for them the terms open and close;--the former, to denote the sound usually given to a vowel when it forms or ends an accented syllable; as, ba, be, bi, bo, bu, by;--the latter, to denote the sound which the vowel commonly takes when closed by a consonant ”

“ A knowledge of about three dozen different elementary sounds is implied in the faculty of speech. The power of producing these sounds with distinctness, and of adapting them to the purposes for which language is used, constitutes perfection of utterance. Had we a perfect alphabet, consisting of one symbol, and only one, for each elementary sound; and a perfect method of spelling, freed from silent letters, and precisely adjusted to the most correct pronunciation of words; the process of learning to read would doubtless be greatly facilitated. ”

“ The powers of the letters are properly those elementary sounds which their figures are used to represent; but letters formed into words, are capable of communicating thought independently of sound. The simple elementary sounds of any language are few, commonly not more than thirty-six; [96] but they may be variously combined, so as to form words innumerable. Different vowel sounds, or vocal elements, are produced by opening the mouth differently, and placing the tongue in a peculiar manner for each ”

“ I repeat every word, together with its meaning, write it down on the blackboard in phonetical transcription, and explain every symbol as it occurs, at the same time articulating the corresponding sound isolated (this is of great importance! also the consonants alone without any vowel, either before or after) , and drawing it out very long. [45]
In not a few cases, the pupils will be able to imitate the sound with sufficient exactness, when it has been produced isolated; at all events, they do it far better than when they only hear it among other sounds. ”

“ No regard need be paid to orthographic or correct spelling, only such words as may be considered indispensably necessary to give the sound of the word, must be expressed. As in all phonographic systems, each word expressed by consonants, must be guessed by supplying vowels, or from its position in the context. The reader, after a little practice, will find no difficulty in making out the words expressed by their consonants, as bsk, bbl, bkm, drk, meaning bask or busk, became or become, dark or dirk. ”

“ A scientific alphabet should aim at representing all possible sounds, and not merely those 367 needed in an alphabet of a particular linguistic community.
Even in the case of the best-spelt languages, i.e. the languages in which the principle of one sound standing for one sign, and one sign for one single sound obtains, we shall find that these aim only at satisfying the ordinary practical needs of the language. They make as few distinctions as is consistent with ordinary clearness and consistency. ”

“ If neither of the two sounds into which an old one “splits” is a new sound, it means that there has been a phonetic leveling, that two groups of words, each with a distinct sound or sound combination, have fallen together into one group. This kind of leveling is quite frequent in the history of language. In English, for instance, we have seen that all the old long ü-vowels, after they had become unrounded, were indistinguishable from the mass of long i-vowels. This meant that the long i-vowel became a more heavily weighted point of the phonetic pattern than before. ”